Networking, and Internetworking, provide electronic devices the ability to communicate with remote devices, along with the other associated benefits of such communication. However, networks can consist of large numbers of devices spread over enormous geographic areas. Consequently, maintaining the health of such networks present considerable challenges. A network may consist of a variety of types of devices, communicating over a variety of mediums, using various protocols. Such networks may include wireless devices, traditional voice, ATM, Frame Relay, Cable, DSL, and dial platforms. Optical networks are becoming increasingly popular for performance reasons.
With the ever increasing demand for bandwidth and the need to deploy new network services, networks of more and more enormous capacity are now necessary to provide the base infrastructure to support high traffic requirements. Optical-fiber based networks, having rapidly become the standard network media, provide much larger bandwidth than previous technologies and fill these needs. There are currently over 3 million miles of optical fiber in place and much more planned.
Technologies have developed that increase the available usage of even the intrinsic high density usage provided by fiber-optics. One of these many technologies is Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM).
The vastly increasing density of usage, and users, makes the management of large networks ever more complex. The tools to assist net management have advanced along with the progress in net tools. A significant part of a net management tool kit is the ability to audit the performance of the network infrastructure. However, each new development in networking increases the demands on net auditing capability.
Three faces of network management drive the basics of network auditing. Configuration management needs cover the hardware connections. Performance management is necessary to guarantee a quality of service to the network users. Fault management provides protection techniques to ensure the network continues to function in the presence of failures. Network elements such as optical amplifiers, add/drop multiplexers, cross-connects and other optical network elements, require proactive auditing to meet the levels of service expected by providers and end users.
What is required, then, is a means of providing a pro-active audit in a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network. Specifically, the auditing tool that meets this need must efficiently collect data from a multitude of devices and device types that are diverse in performance and in geography. Furthermore, the tool must present the results of the data collection in a manner that allows timely and appropriate responses, consisting of corrective actions or effective planning, by users.